As Afghanistan is one of the more distant corners of the Earth, books on Afghanistan are rare and experts on Afghanistan even rarer. Newly married, Rosanne Klass and her husband traveled to Afghanistan in 1951. Rosanne thought she'd be teaching English, but the American director of the school refused to hire her, believing that the place of women was "Kinder, Kuche and Kirche."
After a few months, Rosanne was hired to teach at the Darul Mo'Allamein bording school where she was beloved by her students and, eventually, was even appreciated by the mullahs, the religious teachers. Although Rosanne never left the valleys immediately around Kabul, The Land of the High Flags is full of high adventure: Rosanne witnesses the brutal game of Buzkashi, where over a hundred horseman armed with whips compete to drag a 150-pound carcass around a goalpost over a mile away and was nearly ambushed while traveling the Khyber Pass at night. From her description of the holy month of Ramadan to her relationship with her housekeeper, Gul Baz, Land of the High Flags portrays Afghanistan as a place where people live, rather than a place where they die.
When Rosanne visited Afhganistan, Afghanistan appeared to be on the path to modernization. Not long before, a sign on the border with Pakistan read "IT IS ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN TO CROSS THIS BORDER INTO AFGHAN TERRITORY." In 1951, the rules of purdah were still enforced: mature women were shrouded in the chadri and moved through the streets like ghosts. When the enforcement of purdah ended in 1959, one women wrote to a friend, "I have come out of a prison into the world of light. In my whole life I will never ask for anything more..." Around 1965, the Soviet Union began a campaign to politically dominate Afghanistan, which broke into a full-scale war in 1973. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan disintegrated into a state of lawlesness before control was gained by the Taliban, a radical islamic group that rolled back many of the progressive changes made by the country.
Land of the High Flags is illustrated by 32 photographs, some of which Rosanne took herself. These illustrate the dramatic terrain, the faces of ordinary people, the appearance of both Kabul and the mountain villages, as well as famous monuments such as the great Bhudda at Bamian which was destroyed by the Taliban last year. (The Bhudda did survive a massacre perpetrated by Genghis Kahn, who ordered the destruction of every plant, animal and human in Bamian after an arrow took the life of his favorite grandson.)
Strategically positioned at the crossroads of central Asia, empire after empire has tried to capture Afghanistan, but none have been able to crush the pride or the sense of national identity of it's people. Rosanne Klass developed a great love for the people of Afghanistan, and later became an outspoken critic of the Soviet occupation of that country. Although the history of Afghanistan has been wracked with brutal wars, Land of the High Flags gives a taste of the texture of life there before Afghanistan's latest round of suffering.
Title: Land of the High Flags: A Travel Memoir of Afghanistan
Author: Rosanne Klass
Publisher: Random House, New York.
Year: 1964
Libraries: TCPL
